Interpretive Summary: The expansion of the ethanol biofuel industry has generated a variety of co-products, which due to availability and price, have become available for use as a potential feedstuff for broilers. Most recently, ethanol companies have been extracting a portion of the oil from distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) resulting in a product called reduced oil (RO)-DDGS. To date, however, it is not known the impact of this oil extraction on the caloric value to growing birds. This research demonstrated that the caloric value of RO-DDGS is indeed less than that of higher oil-DDGS, but the caloric value to the growing bird depends more upon its fiber concentration and not on its oil concentration. This information is important for nutritionists at universities, feed companies, and broiler production facilities for the determination of the energy value of RO-DDGS for use in feed formulations, and provides a basis from which to assess its economic value.

Technical Abstract:
An experiment consisting of two identically designed trials was conducted to determine the nutrient composition and AMEn content of distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) in order to develop prediction equations for AMEn in broilers. Fifteen samples of DDGS ranging in ether extract (EE) from 3.15 to 13.23% (DM-basis) were collected from various dry-grind ethanol plants and were subsequently fed to broiler chicks to determine AMEn content. A corn-soybean meal control diet was formulated to contain 15% dextrose and test diets were created by mixing the control diet with 15% DDGS at the expense of dextrose. In each trial, 672 male Ross × Ross 708 chicks were housed in grower battery cages with 7 birds per cage (0.06 m2/bird) and received a common starter diet until 10 d of age. Each pen was randomly assigned to 1 of 16 dietary treatments, with 6 replicate pens per treatment.